Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wholecloth - The First

This is not a quilt for show. I learned a lot by making this one and I'm already designing the next one. A Wholecloth quilt seems easy--no piecing! Just take a couple of yards of very wide fabric for the top and the bottom, insert batting, and quilt it. Right? NOOoooooooo! You must plan how you are going to quilt it. You start at the top and quilt down to the bottom, or start in the middle and quilt out to the sides, then roll back to the top, then to the bottom. You quilt the top, the center medallion, then the bottom, leaving the center sides for last so you can distribute the designs evenly in the middle. There's more than one way to quilt a Wholecloth! If you've never done one, just jump in and try it. You can't go wrong! This one needs more quilting in the bubble spots, but I'm calling it done. I love the Battenburg Lace around the edges. I pinned the lace sleeve caps to the top of the quilt, stitched in the outer wide lace, then trimmed top excess. I trimmed away the excess quilt from underneath also. The batting edge shows, but not from the top. It isn't a very pretty finishing underneath, but it's lovely from the front. Be sure to quilt evenly all over. You can see from my pictures what happens after it's washed and dried--lots of empty spaces that need quilting. For today, it's my first. Remember Kindergarten? We all started somewhere.

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I am Bonnie Russell, owner and quilter, and my business is making beautiful quilts and making quilts beautiful. NABQC came about as a partnership between the love of sewing and hazelnut farming. That's how the name was chosen. My husband, Fred, is the nut farmer, and I do the sewing using many bolts of fabulous fabric. My studio is located in Dundee, Oregon, the beautiful Willamette Valley, in the center of a hazelnut orchard. Experience came with 42 years of dress making, 40 years of marriage to my wonderful, loving, supportive husband (34 years of nut farming), 25 years of raising three daughters, and now we have seven grandchildren to mentor in Future Quilters of America!

With a Statler Stitcher and Gammill Optimum Plus longarm quilting machine, a 14 foot table, and the drawing program AutoSketch, no project is too big or too small. Anything from hand guided meandering to custom digitized designs can be applied to a project to complete that labor of love.

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